Photo documentary of The Egret Fishing League
This morning I woke up feeling stiff after dreaming about starting a second-hand costume jewelry shop. I set off on a trek to drop my netflix in the mailbox and walk down by the lake. The world being early and sunny, I grabbed my camera and walked down to find all the egrets were flying east...while I was walking west. So I turned back around, and walked down to find them.
The snowies and a couple of great egrets were standing around having a Fishing League meeting, which was often interrupted by one or five of them splashing about to capture the nearest fish. A couple of geese and gulls were listening in to the mostly-silent meeting. The trees stood aloof nearby in their autumn capes and finery, though some were looking a bit scantily clad.
One by one the birds got bored of the meeting--or bothered by my camera clicking nearby--and started to soar off west. I got several shots of their butts wiggling as they fluttered away and a couple decent shots also.
I think some of them must have planned it all in advance because they ended up in a break-out meeting just a little ways off, mostly the snowies. Even though I had my camera set to do auto exposure, their white wings were too bright so I set the exposure lower (AV down three-five stops) so the shot didn't get all blown out. This made it interesting to shoot over dark water in flight, but it also produced some fun sparkle effects a la this photo:
I did manage to capture a few cormorants swimming nearby, but with my camera stopped down for the white birds, the darker ones didn't expose so well. I also managed to notice the trio of brown pelicans flying in from their hunt, but a gull swooped down to ruin the best of my shots of one of the pellies landing. Sad sad. So I didn't upload all the photos.
My camera stopped working after a while, and I got the dreaded CF Full message--out of card space. I'm in the habit of using my compact flash cards without formatting them for a while, but shooting RAW, the cards are bound to fill up eventually. So realizing I was wheezy from the cold air anyway, and didn't want to stand there deleting shots one by one, I headed home for my morning cuppa joe and 50 new photos to edit. Not bad for an hour on the lake.
The snowies and a couple of great egrets were standing around having a Fishing League meeting, which was often interrupted by one or five of them splashing about to capture the nearest fish. A couple of geese and gulls were listening in to the mostly-silent meeting. The trees stood aloof nearby in their autumn capes and finery, though some were looking a bit scantily clad.
One by one the birds got bored of the meeting--or bothered by my camera clicking nearby--and started to soar off west. I got several shots of their butts wiggling as they fluttered away and a couple decent shots also.
I think some of them must have planned it all in advance because they ended up in a break-out meeting just a little ways off, mostly the snowies. Even though I had my camera set to do auto exposure, their white wings were too bright so I set the exposure lower (AV down three-five stops) so the shot didn't get all blown out. This made it interesting to shoot over dark water in flight, but it also produced some fun sparkle effects a la this photo:
I did manage to capture a few cormorants swimming nearby, but with my camera stopped down for the white birds, the darker ones didn't expose so well. I also managed to notice the trio of brown pelicans flying in from their hunt, but a gull swooped down to ruin the best of my shots of one of the pellies landing. Sad sad. So I didn't upload all the photos.
My camera stopped working after a while, and I got the dreaded CF Full message--out of card space. I'm in the habit of using my compact flash cards without formatting them for a while, but shooting RAW, the cards are bound to fill up eventually. So realizing I was wheezy from the cold air anyway, and didn't want to stand there deleting shots one by one, I headed home for my morning cuppa joe and 50 new photos to edit. Not bad for an hour on the lake.